ampan:
Whatever be the background, it is clear that the F/O wanted to go right and the captain did not. It is also clear that the only way out was to the left.
Typo? Your theory would suggest the only way out was to the right - though given the impact zone's location it could be argued that any evasive maneouvre at that point was too late.
OK - so the number of previous pilots is much lower, duly noted. However, that still leaves several pilots who, according to your source, received a briefing that told them they were routing direct to McMurdo Station (though the word "approximately" in the script, as well as the lack of the term "direct" does give me pause for thought as to whether that's a fair argument), while the majority of their briefing materials said they were going down McMurdo Sound. So back to my original point - why do you single Collins out for censure when any one of them, by your terms, should have reported the discrepancy?
Collins had no reason to question the waypoint - he had no idea that it had changed because nobody thought to inform dispatch. Are you seriously suggesting that having plotted the route the night before, having got the flight plan from dispatch, he should have plotted them again? One of the major points of having a whole division of the company dedicated to navigation is that line pilots should be able to trust the information that they are given, surely?
And I don't read the notes as saying they were uncertain of their position - I see them as simply saying they could not visually confirm where they were - and as a result they elected to climb out, unfortunately too late to make a difference. This was mere seconds before impact - up until then they had no reason to think they were anywhere other than where the previous flights had gone.
The obvious location for the final waypoint was a beacon. Initially, it was the NDB. When that failed, they changed it to the TACAN. The problem was that for 14 months the waypoint was not at the NDB, so a change that was thought to be very small turned out to be of the order of 26 nautical miles.
As I understood it, Chief Navigator Hewitt initially intended to set the waypoint at the ice runway for McMurdo, neither the NDB or the TACAN. What Simpson found was that following the INS track to the false waypoint he was a considerable distance from the TACAN, which he dialled in for confirmation. This is important because firstly it is not recorded whether Simpson told Nav Section how far off the waypoint was, and also because he did not report it until after his flight. Hewitt gave the instruction to correct the waypoint, believing it to be only a 2 mile difference. He did not make the check himself, and it would appear the data operator simply entered the correction without plotting the distance himself (he may not have been navigationally qualified, computers being recalcitrant things in 1979). This change went into the computer the morning of Collins' flight and no other notification was given. A major systemic failure. As such, the Byrd waypoint is somewhat irrelevant.